Why this Deadhead Beatnik Beatlemaniac loves Pop’s Princess
I’ve been into Taylor Swift since a New York Times profile in 2008 talked about her confessional songwriting and use of social media — at the time, MySpace. (!) Her second album Fearless was set to come out (and would go on to win Album of The Year at the Grammys), and she was still a teenager and thought of as a country singer, but I liked how preternaturally self-assured she was (similar to the young Beatles), and how she connected directly with her fans (like the Grateful Dead with their ticket sales and newsletters), and how she wrote so unapologetically autobiographically (like Jack Kerouac & Allen Ginsberg).
Since then she’s gone on to set new standards in live show production and attendance — something the Dead pioneered — and has created the closest thing to global Beatlemania since the originals.
And speaking of the Dead, the Eras Tour shows are clocking in at 3½ hours — longer than even Dead concerts, who are famous for doing the longest shows in music!
And it’s not just the popularity but the quality of the songwriting. There’s no one alive who’s written more hits and hooks in the last 15 years than her — and she’s only 33 years old!
I love me some Hunter/Garcia and Bob Dylan and Lennon & McCartney, and Taylor just became the first of any of them (or anyone, period) to be Grammy-nominated for Song of The Year seven times! The Grammys are voted on by the people who make the music we all listen to, and seven times in the past dozen years they thought she wrote one of the five best songs of the year. The reason both the Dead and the Beatles are still part of culture today is because of their songwriting. And Taylor Swift is one helluva songwriter.
And another thing about her songs and shows and public persona — she’s all about positivity and happiness and living a life of joy. All You Need Is Love. Sometimes some people get bent outta shape when she’s compared to The Beatles — but to my ears, I get the same feeling listening to her as I do from that band that first personified Love. And it’s probably a big reason both were so popular in turbulent times.
And then there’s how she treats her band and crew — something that made the news when she gave each of her truck drivers and other crew a life-changing bonus of $100,000 apiece. The Dead were known to pay their ‘family’ crew significant salaries with benefits and basically include everybody in the profit sharing. Allen Ginsberg was known for his never-ending philanthropy that often left him with less money at the end of the year than the people who worked for him.
I also love how she’s a dedicated workaholic — something else I admired about The Beatles and both Kerouac and Ginsberg. Jack died at 47 and has over 50 different books in print; Allen wrote over 500 poems and never stopped performing and teaching until his body finally wore out at age 70; and The Beatles’ quality and quantity of output in a condensed time has never been equaled by anybody.
She says in the revealing Miss Americana documentary — “I’m only here because I work hard and am nice to people.” And for all of us, no matter our age or field of endeavor, that is wise advice and solid motivation.
And then there’s the family aspect. Taylor’s mom and dad have been supportively involved in every part of her career from the time they up and moved the family to Nashville when she was 14 so she could pursue songwriting. She calls her mom her best friend. She’s stayed loyal to her band and dancers, keeping many of them consistent despite changing genres album after album. Jack and his mother were pretty inseparable his whole life, the Dead were famous for their ‘family’ of friends they stuck with since the ’60s, and the entire Beat Generation was based around a familial sense of camaraderie and support.
And speaking of Jack & Taylor’s closeness with their mothers — they’re also both pretty famous for their lifelong love of their cats.
Jack, his cat, and his mom
And one nice hardcore connection — Aaron Dessner (of The National) — who Taylor’s described as her “collaborator soulmate” and have co-written nearly 30 songs together, is not only a Deadhead but loves him some Jack as well, having scored & performed the music for the best film adaptation of a Kerouac novel, Big Sur.
And it seems like every person who meets Taylor says how normal she is. She’s been living in the white-hot media spotlight since she was a teenager, has over-the-top ego reinforcement, and enough money to indulge in every bad habit ever invented — but never once have we seen her make a mess of things — or even insult anyone.
Also like the Dead, as many music reporters have noticed, her fans self-create a giant all-day party in the parking lot around her shows — they call it “Taylor-gating” — and sell trade or ‘miracle’ handmade clothing and jewelry with each other. Etsy reported that $3 million worth of homemade Taylor friendship bracelets sold in the summer of 2023 alone. Just as the Dead scene grew organically by the fans creating their own customs and culture, Swifties have created a world by and for themselves. Even the word ‘Swifties’ was created by fans. And like ‘Deadheads’ a word was needed to be coined to cover their multitudes. Their embrace of friendship bracelets that they make and give away to one another echoes how Deadheads would make and gift each other tie-dyed clothing and cassette tapes of live shows.
And just as a funny–cool sidebar, the Swifties’ friendship bracelets first appeared when she made an Instagram post in 2019 wearing some, but they really kicked off in 2022 with the line on her Midnights album, “So make the friendship bracelets, take the moment and taste it.” When a new generation of Merry Pranksters gelled in 2014 with the 50th anniversary of the original psychedelic Bus trip across America, these next geners immediately started making and trading bracelets with friendly expressions and lyrics. So, the Dead’s off-shoot family were already practicing the bracelet love several years before they began filling Swifites’ arms.
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When the pandemic hit in 2020, I began an autodidactic Film Studies program and immersed myself in Get Out The Vote operations for Joe Biden, so music wasn’t front of mind. Having not seen Taylor perform since the Netflix movie of the all-stadium Reputation tour in 2018, I tuned in for her Saturday Night Live appearance in November 2021 and was just jaw-dropped by her mesmerizing 10-minute version of All Too Well. This was a whole new thing.
How could I not think about Dylan’s 11-minuteSad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands? After I recomposed myself, I posted about it to Facebook to let people in other time zones know not to miss it. The bulk of my friends are Deadheads or Beatle freaks or beatniks so some were surprised I was raving about this pop star — but more fun was the discovery of fellow secret Swifties in my midst. 😄
This jaw-dropping performance really re-sparked my interest. “Geez — what is this woman up to?!” I’d heard a few songs from Folklore and Evermore that she created during the pandemic lockdown and could tell she was growing as a songwriter, but I was more into my Film Studies world and unless something was part of a movie it wasn’t gonna be on my front burner.
Then wouldn’t you know it — she wroteanddirected a short film based around this All Too Well song! Now we’re gettin somewhere! 😄
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The Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) even featured the film in 2022, and I discovered that she had actually become a director (!) having helmed all of her own music videos since 2019. And man, does she know the artform! Check this out —>
And Variety reported that she’s written a movie script and signed with Searchlight Pictures to make her feature-length directorial debut. Searchlight is who made the recent Banshees of Inisherin, and Best Picture winners Nomadland, The Shape of Water, Birdman, 12 Years a Slave and Slumdog Millionaire.
And speaking of cinematic masterpieces, Greta Gerwig and Margot Robbie’s Barbie was breaking records in movie theaters at the same time Taylor was rewriting the concert business. My mother was a feminist before there was a word for it, and she passed it on to me, and in this era of toxic masculinity and women’s rights being taken away it’s so gratifying and empowering to see women (including Beyoncé) dominating two industries that have historically been ruled by men.
This woman has somehow created a fanbase that reflects the collective camaraderie of my favorite band, writes roman à clef songs like my favorite author and poet, and by 2023 at age 33 had manifested the biggest global musical phenomena since The Beatles. And now she was becoming a filmmaker!
Here’s Seth Meyers on Howard Stern describing Taylor being the SNL host at age 19 and “what a force of nature she is” writing her own “perfect, fully formed” opening monologue as a song . . .
Then here’s the brilliant funny Monologue Song . . . age 19 . . .
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And then this is one of the most heart-wrenching things I’ve ever seen — documentary footage of her standing up against her own father and managers’ strong pushback about how she’s going to start speaking out politically . . .
And here’s a fantastic emotional 7-minute doc on Taylor & her fans made by Time for the Person of The Year award . . .
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And here she is giving an inspirational speech for the ages — and for all ages — at my old alma mater NYU . . .
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And just for fun — here’s Dave Grohl telling the story of how Taylor “saved my ass” by playing a song at a party at Paul McCartney’s house . . .
And just cuz it’s funny . . . this makes me laugh out loud every time — especially Leslie Jones . . .
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Bonus Fun-Fact Lightning Round
Taylor Swift is the first living artist in history to have 5 different albums in the Billboard Top 10 at the same time.
She’s the first artist in history to hold all 10 songs in the Billboard Top 10.
She’s had 3 different #1 albums in 2023 alone.
Each album she releases breaks the all-time streaming record on Spotify, iTunes & Apple that she herself set previously, and in 2023 she was the most streamed artist on all three services and the most searched person on Google.
The week that The Beatles’ Now and Then came out and cracked the Top 10 — Taylor was holding the top *21* slots on Spotify the week the Fabs showed up.
And speaking of The Beatles, she did something only they have done, having an album at #1 for six weeks for four consecutive albums.
She writes all her own songs and is the first songwriter in history to be nominated for a Song of The Year Grammy seven times.
She wrote her first song at age 12, and was playing a 12-string guitar by 13! She has a great story about how her music teacher at the time said she’d never be able to play a 12-string — so she immediately went and learned it and fired his ass. 😄
Ryan Adams recorded a successful track-by-track cover of Taylor’s entire 1989 album.
With over 4 million concert tickets sold worldwide in 2023 alone, she more than doubles the next closest artist (her good friend Beyoncé) in both tickets and gross. In fact, in just 8 months this year she surpassed the 5-year-long Elton John Farewell Tour as the biggest grossing tour of all time, bringing in over $1 billion — the first tour in history to cross the “b” line. And she’s gonna double that by the time it’s over.
The 100-year-old AMC movie chain had their biggest single box office day in history the day her Eras concert movie tickets went on sale, and it’s now the biggest grossing concert film of all time.
She’s a self-made woman billionaire who earned it all by creating art.
And that’s not even getting into her voter registration efforts that led to the biggest single-day record for new registrations in history.
Or that in every city she played in America on the Eras tour she made massive donations to the local food banks. When she played Levi’s Stadium in San Jose — where I saw the Dead & Company do one of their Fare Thee Well shows in 2015 — the food bank announced she donated “enough to feed 500,000 people every month for a year.” Swift’s people did not announce the donation — they do it all on the QT — but when Second Harvest announced it they saw a 43% rise in donations because of the awareness she brought to the cause.
Or the $55 million in bonuses she’s given her employees. Or that she immediately sent another million to the residents in Tennessee hit by the tornados in December 2023 — just as she’d done when one hit in March 2020. Billboard magazine ran a piece in Dec. 2023 listing some of the other donations she’s quietly made over the years including another million to Louisiana flood relief, books to libraries, money to schools and animal protection & rescue groups and sexual assault services, and paying fans’ medical bills and student loans and back rent.
Or that the U.S. Federal Reserve cited her specifically as being a boost to the economy; or that Attorney General Merrick Garland quotes her lyrics in conversation; or that Barbara Walters famously said in her Most Fascinating People ABC special in 2014 — “Taylor Swift IS the music industry.”
Or this is a great piece by a New York psychiatrist about how prominent Taylor is among her patients and how the songwriter is therapy for them the rest of the week when they’re not in session.
Here’s a YouTube playlist with great video of the entire Jack on Film show —
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Here’s a riffing interview with WCAP in Lowell about all things Kerouac — and the new “Jack on Film: Take 2” show — with nearly a hundred photos telling the story —
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Here’s the 2-minute teaser livestream tour of the beautiful Luna Theater a few days before the show . . .
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Here’s the show-day afternoon Amramless Jam show with three 2-minute pieces including ‘Hearing Shearing’ from On The Road and the Ode To Jack, plus Mike Flynn riffing about “Jack on Film” in the outro . . .
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Here’s the opening of the afternoon show with Lowell Celebrates Kerouac President Mike Flynn doing a spectacular reading of the opening of Jack’s Old Angel Midnight followed by the great jazz poet and activist John Sinclair doing his poem blending the Beats and the Bebop musicians — “Brilliant Corners” — followed by his new (October 2023) tribute poem for David Amram — “Ou-Bop Sh’Bam, Amram, Amram.”
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Here’s the YouTube livestream of the entire show including the interview with Big Sur director Michael Polish and all 18 films, TV shows and sizzle reels shown.
The description below the video contains blue time links where you can jump to all the film entries and subjects covered in the Mike Polish interview . . .
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Here’s one minute from the following afternoon — our annual collective gathering at Jack’s gravesite in Edson Cemetery on the day after the shows end. Grass and weeds always grow over Jack’s ground stone, and every October I trim it back to create a nice even organic frame around his marker. Camera & creation by my “Jack on Film” co-producer Julian Ortman.
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Here’s a Facebook photo album of the 2023 festival —
Here’s another riffing photo-filled interview with Mike Flynn from WUML where we cover Kerouac’s writing process and legacy, and the Beats’ connection to the Grateful Dead and the Merry Pranksters, as well as the Cassady family, and George Walker “Jack & Neal Ride Again” tour with George in the role of his longtime friend Neal —
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Here’s a virtual documentary with words and pictures from the Billy Joel We Didn’t Start The Fire podcast series that covers all aspects of Kerouac’s life and legacy —
Here’s the bulk of the first “Jack on Film” show on Oct. 9th, 2022, via the YT livestream —
Imagine, if you will, a place where music and love fill the air, and every person works for free to build a utopian kingdom.
Imagine a secret island hideaway whose location is only shared to people who’ve earned an invitation by a lifetime of good deeds.
Imagine a wonderland forest filled with fluttering fairies and giggling mystics who make magic happen with the tap of a wand.
Fantasylands do exist beyond fiction and films — where living breathing human beings practice the supernatural for the benefit of all.
I was invited to such a place and can confirm its existence if not its location. I remember tall trees and a lake. I remember wandering for hours through campsites so elaborate you’d think they’d been built over months, not in a day. I remember multiple stages — from the base of a Yasgur’s farm-like natural amphitheater to hidden-away cabanas in the woods on the edge of cliffs with a dozen master musicians playing together in one-time-ever ensembles sharing Marley and Dylan and the Beatles and the Dead.
I saw an army of carpenters — not a one of them paid — building out of a love of creation a giant stage befitting a dream — then breaking it all down in one afternoon so we could scatter and leave no clue anyone was ever there. I saw the best minds of my generation forging friendships out of thin air that change lives forever, and crafting art that changed perception in the present. I saw costumes that coulda been in blockbuster movies, brought from a thousand closets, envisioned for a year, sown and woven together, from Dr. Seuss hats & lit-up umbrellas to painted feet & Gandalf staffs.
The first two hours, I walked around jaw-dropped, unable to speak. I heard the best music ever recorded wafting over the lands from giant sound systems to homey campsites. I met the friendliest people beaming like they’d just drank from the fountain of ecstasy and were sharing their joy breathlessly. I spoke to the ghosts of Bill Graham and Jerry Garcia and they were just as ebullient as you’d imagine they’d be.
And if all this magic had a source, I noticed an inordinate number of Irish leprechauns seeming to be in charge. The Irish — the poets — the pranksters of history. The playful, the giggling, the masters of mischievous — the spinners of language and tellers of tales — the roaming mistrals of old playing songs in the present to collectives of children no matter their age.
I jammed with 90-year-olds and 9-year-olds and couldn’t tell the difference. I talked old verities with teenagers and young music with seniors. I saw a 12-year-old boy buy Abbey Road from a box of old albums and walk down the path staring wide-eyed into its cover like all us old-timers grew up doing. I talked to people who long ago brought their young children to this . . . and now were there with their grandchildren.
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Imagine a festival where every penny of the ticket sales is given to charities for kids with special needs — to help not only the children but their parents as well.
Imagine a festival where everyone from the rock star performers back stage to the front gate ticket-takers were equally as friendly — and equally paid not a cent.
Imagine all the people sharing all the work, living for today, and living life in peace. You may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one.
Soundswell on the main stage — photo by Joel Werner
Poster by Frank McTruck — who did ‘Pokes posters in the ’70s
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The Central Continental Cowpokes — Winnipeg Folk Festival, 1977
Laney Hunt, Rick McGhee, Sue Hodgson, Bill Hodgson, Andy Roblin
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Sadly, regular Cowpoke drummer, mandolin player and singer Brian Ridd was in Europe this month, but he was ably filled in by longtime drummer friend-of-the-family Ron ‘Deep Torpedo’ Torpey.
Here’s the sweet opening ‘soundcheck’ — Friend of The Devil — including a video tour around the first flush room — thanks to Ann La Touche —
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Here’s the opening few songs thanks to Leora Kamehanaokala Almstrom —
You Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere — (The Byrds) Dark Hollow — (Bill Browning, made popular by The Grateful Dead) I Am A Pilgrim — (traditional, via The Byrds) I’m Going Back To Manitoba — (Andrew Roblin) Why You Been Gone So Long — (Mickey Newbury, via the Country Gazette)
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Here’s the bulk of the first set thanks to Brian Humniski —
Dark Hollow — (Bill Browning, made popular by The Grateful Dead) I Am A Pilgrim — (traditional, via The Byrds) I’m Going Back to Manitoba — (Andrew Roblin) Why You Been Gone So Long — (Mickey Newbury, via the Country Gazette) Andy’s three hammer dulcimer songs:
Lucky Trapper’s Reel — (Andy Dejarlis) Ti-Jean Bouribale — (Reg Bouvette) Red River Jig — (traditional, arranged by Andrew Roblin) Honky Tonkin’ — (Hank Williams) Cut It Loose — (Robert Zaporzan) — Hodgson lead vocal Bobby Starr’s first song — Trouble In Mind (Richard M. Jones, a blues standard made popular by Bertha ‘Chippie’ Hill, Dinah Washington & Nina Simone) Bobby Starr’s second song — Every Dark Cloud (Has A Silver Lining Shining Through) — with a Rick bass solo, then Andy takin’ it on the pedal steel Bobby Starr’s third song
END OF FIRST SET — SHORT BREAK
Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere — (Neil Young) Freeborn Man!! — (Jimmy Martin) — with Rick’s monster vocal performance!
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Here’s a stand-alone clip of Bobby Starr’s second song — Every Dark Cloud (Has A Silver Lining Shining Through) — thanks to Ann La Touche —
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Here’s the killer juice of the show — the bulk of the second set — thanks to Brian Humniski —
Roll In My Sweet Baby’s Arms — (traditional, via Flatt & Scruggs) In My Hour of Darkness — (Gram Parsons) — Zap vocal Tennessee — (Bill Monroe) — King vocal Wake Up Little Susie — (Everly Brothers) I’ve Just Seen A Face — (The Beatles) Travelers On The Road — (the Andy Roblin masterpiece and title song of the new album)
How Can She Love Me When I Don’t Have A Car — the Ron Torpey hit This Gettin’ Old Is Gettin’ Old — the new classic by Will Hodgson Manitoba — Andrew’s homage to to our home Henry (!) — (New Riders of The Purple Sage) Love Is a Rose — (Neil Young) I Can’t Hold Out (Talk To Me Baby) — (Willie Dixon) — a Dave Zilkie shines song Not Fade Away — (Buddy Holly) —> Call Me The Breeze — (J.J. Cale) — anutha Zilkie-friendly numbah Sweet Choral (!) — Hodgson’s early classic Band introductions — “Let’s make this an annual event!” Up Against The Wall Redneck Mother — (Jerry Jeff Walker) [first minute]
The show’s conclusion — the final 1:36 of Up Against The Wall Redneck Mother —
— video will turn regular horizontal in 20 seconds —
Dave Zilkie, Rick McGhee, Andrew Roblin, Ron Torpey, Will Hodgson
photo by Brian Humniski
My rock ‘n’ roll mom Enid ended up having a pretty close relationship with many of my musical friends — so here’s A Song of Enid I Sing I wrote for her.
And since this is about great music played in the ‘Peg — here’s the feature story I wrote for Relix magazine about the Festival Express tour and movie when The Dead, Janis Joplin, The Band and many others played there in 1970.
The Art of Glass, the Art of Business, and the Art of Love
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One day a hundred years ago, or maybe it was five, I noticed this store called the Squisha House opened around the corner with insanely cool glass pipes! What the hell?! In little Bronte Village?! I had to investigate!
After keeping an eye on the place for a couple of weeks, I finally went in, and the proprietor Cameron Stubbins & I began such long conversations he had to bring in a chair so I could keep the jam goin’. He taught me about the history of glass pipe art, and I shared the history of the counterculture it grew out of.
Matt Robertson’s Cow Over The Moon
One day, after months of us talking, a blond babe came through the front door and went straight to the stool behind the cash register. I figured Cam prolly knew her. 😁 That was my first intro to the Cam & Kate duo. In that moment, they never said a word to each other — it was all understood.
This is a story about love.
Cameron & Katelynn
They met in a seeking sort of way . . . and Katelynn was infatuated by his Camaro. That’s the funniest thing to me — the stereotype of the car attracting the girl. I already had a girl, thank god, when I bought my first car — a 1967 Dodge Fargo van.
It probably kicked things up a notch, but I never thought the “car thing” actually worked. Yet it most miraculously did here.
Then they formed a business together championing all the glass artists across Canada. And here’s the amazing thing — they’ve become the most successful retail store in the history of this waterfront neighbourhood on the shoulder of Toronto! In fact, it’s the only store that ever has lineups of people stretching down the sidewalk before they open!
Many small businesses fail within a year, and fully half within two — but these guys are rockin it five years out and have stacks of boxes shipping all over the world every day.
I came of age in Greenwich Village in NYC, and now find myself in Bronte Village in the GTA, and this little artists’ hive is the only place that would be at home in either Village.
Oakville The Good is one of the few towns in Canada that doesn’t allow marijuana dispensaries, but this glass pipe store brings in people from all over the world!
It’s so crazy how these two youngins from out of town realized how cool Bronte could be. Now I can’t imagine the place without them.
They planted the flag of playful weirdness on July 21st, 2018, and the Village has been alive with art and youth ever since!
Or here’s one about some fireworks shenanigans and how some folks can be too quick to jump to conclusions.
And since we’re in the middle of the summer movie watching season — here’s my Master Movie List with over 800 films sorted by Auteurs, Comedies, Dramas, Documentaries and such.
In my never-ending search for Adventure I stumbled into the coolest little enclave in the harbourfront park in front of my house — an astronomer’s meet-up digging infinity (to riff on Lord Buckley’s line). And these people are really doing it!
Whenever there’s something special going on in the sky and the conditions are clear, a whole bunch of science buffs drive in from towns all around with massive telescopes and point them at the sun (using filters) and the planets (when it’s dark), and the coolest thing to this novice’s eyes — the moon!
We’ve all seen great photos of our closest orb, but it’s nothing like looking at its surface live in real time through 200-times magnification. You can almost see the dune buggies NASA left behind!
And what’s extraordinary about it is the camaraderie of the assembled, and how popular it’s become. The main organizer, Marc Fitkin, just started doing it six months ago on kind of a lark. He let his network of fellow astronomers know, and a couple more joined him, then a couple more, and now there’s about a dozen who all bring different types of telescopes and gather in the Bronte Heritage Waterfront Park whenever there’s a cool astronomical event.
He just started by making a post in a Bronte neighbourhood group on Facebook, and there was such a reaction he created his own Bronte Astronomers group that quickly grew to nearly 1000 people in just a few months. For the full ‘Strawberry Moon’ on Saturday June 3rd, several hundred people came by over the few hours they were out there.
In this picture you see a 1903 Marsh Refractor telescope owned by a 19-year-old future Carl Sagan named Matteo Statti.
You know when you go to a sporting event and can discuss the minutiae of the game with everyone around you? Or to a concert of a band with passionate fans whose eyes light up when you talk to them? It’s that same kind of knowledgeable passion . . . except it’s about space! Suddenly you’re hanging at a party full of Neil deGrasse Tysons who not only know the name of every dot in the sky, but can tell you how far away it is and how it’s related to the cosmos!
And speaking of concerts, a night with this crew has the same dynamics — the sun as an opening act, and the evening modulates in a steady build to a crescendo as the sky grows darker and the atmospheric conditions change. Plus you’re experiencing a natural symphony in a collective and can turn to one another and share beams of joy at the magic you’re all dancing to.
In this crazy ol’ world of outrage culture and polarization and high prices for everything . . . looking through a telescope and talking to smart people is still free and fun!
When I spoke with founder Marc about the group, the first thing he said to me was it was based on four founding principles. I expected him to say something like — science, discovery, investigation and education. But instead he said — accessibility, dignity, respect and safety. Did I suddenly slip through a wormhole into theology class? No! Even though these guys are dealing in hard science — the things that are most important to them are that their events are accessible to all — including them bringing ladders and chairs so little kids can reach the eye pieces. And that everyone who comes into their orbit is treated with respect and made to feel safe. It reminded me of Einstein’s line — “The more I study science, the more I believe in God.”
founder Marc and protégé Matteo
So, the whole scene has this solid foundation of love . . . and on top of that you can have every question about the universe answered!
And this study of deep science has inevitably morphed them all into philosophers. As another of their founding members, Peter West, said — “A park that is used is a park that is safe.” I love that. And also their playful poetic foundational tenet — “Keep looking up!”
This isn’t just about celestial phenomena — it’s a philosophy of life. And it’s grounded rock-solid on intangibles. They may be calculating degrees and adapting for the rotation of the earth and positions of the stars — but at its base it’s about hope and optimism.
And it’s about curiosity and passion and knowledge.
It’s about what is . . . and what might be.
And all day and night long it’s attracting people from little kids to octogenarians who stop and talk and look and learn. And it’s about human traits that are common the world over. In an hour of looking at a full moon I talked to people who started this journey from probably a dozen different countries.
If this was a restaurant — it would be the kind of place that opened six months ago and has a line out the door. Except it’s people waiting to look through a telescope!
These folks have got a hit on their hands. And next April there’s going to be a total eclipse of the sun . . . and Oakville is going to be an hour from dead center in the path of totality!
In this crazy ol’ world, if things are bringing you down, know that there’s a community nearby where things are always looking up.
A buncha teenagers came to my little harbourfront neighbourhood cuz it has a corner Variety store that’ll sell anything to anybody including fireworks to kids. We had a little to-do here a couple years ago on Canada Day (July 1st) when the same thing happened — a buncha kids gathered outside the 7-11 & McDonalds and were settin off fireworks and having a rowdy time of it.
My home office window looks out on this very street behind my house, and when it started (two years ago) I went out and got right in the middle of it as I usually do and hung with the kids and got transported back to my own youth in Winnipeg in the ’70s.
One of my takeaways was how multi-racial the collective was — from Swedish white to Kenyan black — and how everybody got along so naturally. There were a few rabble-rousers, like there were in my teenage gangs, but in the main they were all nice friendly open-minded kids just out for sumpthin to do on a summer holiday night.
When the crowd dispersed and I got home I was stunned to read on this local Facebook group all these old people just railing against these kids — even though not one single one of them spent one single minute with any of them.
This year, around 9PM on the Victoria Day holiday (May 22nd), I heard fireworks starting up from around the same location, so I headed out my door and was in the middle of it 90 seconds later. The crowd was 3 or 4 times the size of the last one — maybe 200-300 kids — but this time they were armed with a bunch of M-80-type explosives — not so much the “fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars” as Kerouac famously described the light-up-the-sky kind.
This time the cops were there waitin for ’em from before it started and when one kid allegedly shot a bottle rocket in their general direction they moved in and arrested him, and began a general dispersion maneuver shooshing the kids along the road.
What was so funny to my American eyes was how polite both the cops and the kids were. There were no billy clubs being swung or rocks being thrown — it was just a bunch of cops politely telling a bunch of kids to move along . . . and the kids moving along. No shop windows were broken, no epithets hurled, no anger, just a buncha kids being shooshed along the sidewalk on a holiday weekend in the summer. It was so Canadian.
While I was out there with them, surfing the wave as it rolled down the road, I thought about that neighbourhood Facebook group and figured they’d be up in arms about this like they were last time, and when I got home after the neighbourhood was cleared by 10:30 — boy they did not disappoint! Literally hundreds of comments from people who’d never set foot outside of their house just shitting on these kids . . . and all their parents! It was the most despicable behavior I’ve seen ’round these parts since, well, probably those anti-science yahoos tried to take over Ottawa a year ago. And of course I don’t mean it was the kids who were despicable — I mean how mean these holier-than-thou Facebook warriors were being towards the kids & their parents in their own community . . . without having spent so much as a split-second with any of them.
It was a non-event for the police. They issued one short statement about a disruption in Bronte resulting in one arrest and no property damage or injuries to anyone — but the way these old bitties on Facebook were raging you’d think it was the Watts riots!
I’m really pro Canada and quite fond of the people who live here. We all treat each other with respect and politeness — just as I’d seen the police treat the kids and the kids treat the police — until I got home and saw this firehose of hatred from uninformed people hiding behind their doors & keyboards yelling “Get off my lawn” in the most ugly vitriolic way.
It was so striking that these adults — who thought they were so superior to everyone else — would behave so disparagingly towards these kids who were a thousand times more polite and less judgmental than this self-appointed judge-and-jury who were convicting them.
I sure hope as a species we can stop hurling hate at one another . . . and maybe go out of our houses and engage with people we don’t know about. 💖
The new Bob Center is in Tulsa Oklahoma because the Woody Guthrie Center is there, and because both were paid for by the OK billionaire philanthropist George Kaiser.
Tulsa is remarkably like the midwestern town of Winnipeg I grew up in — flat farmland, low-rise, about a half-million people — and both with active supportive arts communities. Winnipeg had the fertile musical garden that bloomed Neil Young, Burton Cummings and Randy Bachman . . . Tulsa birthed Leon Russell, J.J. Cale and Garth Brooks.
What everyone sees upon first arriving at the Tulsa airport.
Besides the Bob and Woody Centers, there’s Leon Russell’s recently restored Church Studio (which is in a church) and there’s an annual April festival for all things Leon; Cain’s Ballroom (which is so historic they offer tours besides regular concerts); The Gathering Place park (in every Top 10 list of most beautiful parks in America); a vibrant local music club scene including the Colony (in continuous musical operation since 1958) and the beautiful Maggie’s Music Box; as well as many miles of the original Route 66.
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The new Bob Center is right across the street from the Guthrie Green and right next door to the Woody Center, and as soon as you walk through the door you’re greeted with a 16-foot high site-specific iron gate sculpture created by Bob . . .
Then you walk up a few steps and you’re in a giant welcome room with a gift store full of all sorts of Bob gems and a friendly staff where you pay $10 if you’re over 55 and $12 otherwise, and get your free audio guide with 52 different touch stations to hear versions of songs being played, or sometimes interviews and audio backstories, and in a couple cases Sean Penn reading Bob’s memoir Chronicles or Martin Scorsese reading Bob’s speech from the Tom Paine Awards in 1964.
The curved hallway into the film room
The first room of the museum proper is a giant space with a 23-minute (and growing) immersive film by Jennifer Lebeau about Bob’s career playing on three different walls and innumerable screens. No two walls are showing the same thing as images are collaged on screens from wall-sized to tablet-sized. Wonderfully indicative of the whole Center — it’s overwhelming.
Jack Kerouac in the Dylan film
The first time you experience it you get blinded by the light of all the truths & quotes & images spanning a 60+ year career. I was so blown away and realized I was digesting so little of it at first glance, I had to come back a second time. That visit I approached it methodically and was only able to get through the first floor in five hours. (!) If you really wanna do this, it’ll probably take three visits — cuz two wasn’t enough for me.
The ‘screens’ that the opening doc plays on are pages flowing out of a notebook and a typewriter, and off the music stand on a piano. It’s brilliant interior design. I lived in Manhattan for 30 years and have toured museums there and all over the world all my life — and I’ve never seen so beautiful and apt an architectural creation for any artist.
After the surreal swirling movie you enter the main room of the center, which they call the Columbia Gallery. Along the four walls they chronicle Bob’s life in sequence from roughly 1957-ish when he first started to play guitar with others including a couple of cool audio recordings of folks he knew back in Hibbing . . .
… and continuing through him receiving the Medal of Freedom from Obama and the Nobel Prize in Literature, as well as his late-life iron sculpture work.
One revelatory inclusion from the early years was some found 8mm footage from Woodstock in 1964, well before Bob had taken up residence there, featuring Joan, Albert, Mimi and Al Aronowitz!
In the center of this giant old industrial building are six big cement pillars. If you were the interior designer — what do you do with those? The brilliant team Olson Kundig out of Seattle chose to surround each pillar with an exploration of a different song. And of course what they’ll do is rotate the six songs over time. For the inaugural installation they focused on Like A Rolling Stone, Tangled Up In Blue, Jokerman, Chimes of Freedom, Not Dark Yet and The Man In Me. It’ll be cool to see the songs they choose in the future.
Bri & Sky in the six-pillar labyrinth, photo by Gubba Topham
One other highlight of the main room is a small alcove with a faux recording studio you can sit in behind the mixing board. Through the glass looking into the recording studio they use multiple projections to create a diorama of each unique session covering five songs and studios where he laid down the historic tracks — Like A Rolling Stone in New York in 1965, I Want You in Nashville in ’66, Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door in Burbank in 1973, Most of The Time in New Orleans in 1989, and Mississippi in 1996/7.
Producer Tom Wilson in the Columbia Studio in 1965
On I Want You and Knockin’on Heaven’s Door you have the option to play with a 4-channel mix so you can raise or lower different instruments or hear them isolated.
ADD VIDEO OF TANGLED UP IN BLUE NOTEBOOK
Another installation is the Elvis Costello-curated jukebox that has a bunch of songs by Bob, and songs that influenced him, and interpretations of his songs by others, which is a great idea, but I didn’t see many people actually using it because there’s just so much else to experience.
Some other highlights that jumped out from the hundreds of artifacts displayed include — this postcard from Pete Seeger explaining to Bob how he did not in fact object to him going electric in Newport in ’65.
“My big mistake was in not challenging the foolish few who booed. I shoulda said, ‘Howlin’ Wolf goes electric, why can’t Bob?'”
Or Lenny Bruce’s phone number in Bob’s old address book …
Or there’s the note from George Harrison to Bob in 1969 …
Or Bob and my fellow Kelvin High School alum Neil Young playing together in Golden Gate Park in 1975 …
Or this collection of some of Bob’s books including Jack’s Mexico City Blues and Allen’s Howl …
Or a copy of the greatest music journalist ever Ralph J. Gleason’s early review of Bob …
Or this On The Road windshield drawing that should be used for the next edition of Jack’s book …
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One of the artifacts they show in the opening movie that I really wanted to see but isn’t on display is the sheet from the yellow pad where Bob wrote his first original song — Song For Woody — but to me is particularly interesting because he cites writing it at Mill’s Bar on Bleecker Street in the Village. This was a dive bar on Bleecker that was still there in the early ’80s when I was living around the corner — a woebegone joint that has long since been lost to history. I sure as hell didn’t know Bob wrote there back then — and I bet they didn’t either.
This original copy is owned by some huge Woody collector in Colorado, but it’s in the office of one of the people working at the Bob Center where I was able to sweet-talk my way in to see a reproduction of it.
And then there’s the whole second floor.
Photo by Sky Lyons
There’s another long wall of chronological archival stuff including Bob’s costume from a personal favorite creation of his Masked & Anonymous —
There’s also a special exhibition space where they feature different prominent photographers with some connection to Dylan, and a 55-seat theater with a 45-minute documentary collage of different specific aspects of his career.
One omission to an otherwise masterpiece of a design was not including more places for its older demographic to sit and rest and soak it in. But other than that, this whole place rocks like a multi-song encore.
Admission is $10 if you’re over 55, $12 if you’re not.
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Bob Dylan by Ralph Steadman
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If you want a great account of Dylan at the 25th anniversary of Woodstock plus tons of other great musical Adventures check out my Holy Cats! Dream-Catching at Woodstock book.
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The Academy Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role is *the* story of the 2023 Oscars.
I’ve seen all the nominated performances, and thought un-nominated Margot Robbie sure as hell should have been in the mix for Babylon.
Her co-star Eric Roberts, he of the 621 on-screen acting credits, compared her performance to Liz Taylor’s (Oscar-winning) Who’s Afraid of Virginia Wolfe — and he’s right.
. Ana De Armas is appropriately cast in Blonde because, like Marilyn, you can’t take your eyes off her in any scene she’s in . . .
but she’s young and is gonna be around for a long time so she doesn’t really need it now.
. When I saw Michelle Williams with the Best Leading Actress nomination I thought it was some ridiculous insider industry prop-up. What the hell is that Dawson’s Creek kid doing at the Oscars? But she gives a glorious riveting performance as Steven Spielberg’s complicated mother in The Fabelmans.
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And it would be great (and at this point is expected) for much-beloved and largely unheralded Michelle Yeoh to win for her multiple characters in Everything, Everywhere All At Once.
But she and this movie have already won shelves full of awards — and there’s gonna be more coming on Oscar night — and I’m into spreading the wealth … as well as the attention and the spotlight and the future jobs. .
I gotta tell ya . . . you have to see Andrea Riseborough in To Leslie before you make a call in this category. It’s kinda no question the single most gut-wrenching jaw-dropping performance of the year.
And here’s where it gets really interesting — on IMDb, this movie currently has a worldwide gross total of . . . $31,543. (!) 😮
If you don’t know about it, there’s a wild story behind how the performance got nominated … overcoming millions-of-dollars in campaigns for others. You can watch this to get the backstory —
but what this is is independent filmmaking making either its last hurrah in a world that now makes them all but cost-prohibitive . . . or . . . a low-budget indie film could possibly win the Best Lead Actress Oscar. (!)
If it did, it would change how films are made (ie; financed) in America — much like the success of Pulp Fiction did in 1994. This is a helluva story. No other actor winning would cause more films to get green-lit than this one.
And it symbolizes and brings into focus the fact that brilliant films are still being made that, basically, nobody sees. I’d have never even heard of it let alone seen this if it wasn’t nominated for Best Lead Actress.
I think this is an important storyline to be aware of. Even being *nominated* is HUGE (and almost unheard of) for small indie films . . . but if this were to win . . . and all the other nominees did indeed deliver fantabulous performances . . . but honestly . . . this weird indie no-budget movie has a more gut-wrenching performance than any of the A-listers laid down. And speaking of A-listers, you get to see her working scenes with two of them — Alison Janney, and Stephen Root, who is, as he so often is, nearly unrecognizable. The comedian / podcaster /actor Marc Maron is the male lead and proves he has a whole other level of talent nobody knew about before.
I hope Babylon deservedly sweeps its three nominations — for Best Original Score, Production Design and Costume Design — but other than that unheralded masterpiece getting recognition . . . for all my friends who *are* underdogs … or who *root* for underdogs … you’ve got one in this hunt. 😉
You wake up one day and your whole life changes just by the chance seeing of a picture.
Much the way it might with a chance spotting of a poster on a bookstore wall.
As Jack says, “My books are my children.” And as Mama always preached — pregnancy can happen in an instant.
Unlike most books, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Jack Kerouac had a precise Birth Day.
I had no plans to become a parent when I got up on Tuesday, February 19th, 2013, but it was then that I saw a photograph posted to an online Beat group that featured a bunch of the Founding Fathers of the Beat Generation hanging out on a porch at a gathering I went to in 1982.
Peter Orlovsky, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, William Burroughs, Gregory Corso, John Clellon Holmes, Allen Ginsberg, Carl Solomon, with Robert Frank seated, on the front porch of Allen’s house in Boulder, July 1982. Photo courtesy Jerry Aronson from “The Life and Times of Allen Ginsberg” 8 hour DVD set.
It was just like that inexplicable flash vision of seeing the conference poster in the sixth bookstore in Vancouver that prompted the entire adventure. You never expect your future to show up in front of you, but BAM! there it is!
Everyone in the online group was agog at this large gathering of giants, and how everybody looked so young, and that they were all together, and what an amazing collection of spirits this was.
To me it was just an old picture of my summer vacation. As it turned out, not a single one of these myriad scholars or fans in the online group had attended this legendary Woodstock of the Beats.
A flow of online comments ensued, and since I’d been to it, people started saying, “I bet you’ve got some great stories, Brian!” And “I hope you brought a camera!”
“Well, now that you mention it . . . “ I hadn’t looked at those pictures or thought about this thing in years. But being a conscientious contributor I thought I’d chime in with some memories.
“This’ll just take a few minutes to write,” I thought.
I started fresh the next morning — February 20th, 2013. “I’ll just whip this off then go run some errands” — even though I didn’t even have an “E” key on my new but broken MacBook! Had to push the little knobby thing down below!
Somehow I didn’t get it finished that first day. “Well, for sure I’ll finish it up tomorrow. Gawd, I can’t believe this is taking so long!” I started in that second day, but as it kept rolling down the road more and more memories kept coming into focus — and I was transported back to that time, as happens when you write — you begin to live in that world and not the physical one you’re sitting in.
The next day I thought, “For sure this’ll be done by tonight, damn it.” But more photo albums and cassette tapes and notebooks and such kept tumbling off the mountain onto the path, more doors to open, more surprises, more memory boxes, more road going, until . . . “Well, for sure I’ll have this done in a week.” Then . . . “Well, make sure you’re finished in 10 days. It can’t take more than that!!” And this daily delusion of finishing it “tomorrow” went on for eleven daze, every single one of them thinking it would be done the next for sure. But it took eleven for the arc to be told from inception to curtain.
Of course, all sorts of other memory triggers and picture painting and fact checking and fine tuning and stuff continued for weeks, … and then months, until it was finally published two years later.
But I had no concept of telling this Adventure Tale when I woke up this February morning ten years ago, and after eleven time-traveling days in labor this baby was bouncing. And boy, they grow up fast!
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You can order a colorfully signed copy from me (except mailing from Canada is a costly). You can also order it from Amazon or any place you get books.
When the book first came out, raving reaction came flowing in from all over the world. You can read the first batch here.
Then I had to start a second page because the first one grew too large.
And then I started to perform it all over — from New York to L.A., from San Francisco to Lowell. Here’s a playlist from several different shows with the clips in the order they appear in the book . . .
